Will Cotton

25 June 14 — 9 August 14

Artist

Will Cotton lives and works in New York. He has a BFA from Cooper Union in New York City, and also studied at the Beaux Arts in Rouen, France and the New York Academy of Art.
Cotton’s paintings have been shown at the San Francisco Museum of Art (2000); Seattle Art Museum (2002); Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany (2004); Hudson River Museum, New York (2007); and Virginia MOCA (2013). His work is in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Seattle Art Museum, Washington; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; as well as many prominent private collections. More

Overview

Ronchini Gallery is pleased to present American artist Will Cotton’s first UK solo exhibition curated by Bartholomew F. Bland, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Hudson River Museum. The exhibition introduces new large- scale oil on linen paintings.

Based in New York, Cotton is known for his works depicting landscapes of a flawed utopia composed of sweets, pastries and melting ice cream, often occupied by pinup style models.

Elegantly created and strategically composed, Will Cotton’s works are layered with cultural references from European 18th century masters to American mid-century pinup painting. He makes paintings about the pure, the fragrant, the land of plenty, the desirable and the dream of perfection and complete indulgence.

Through works which are sincere and masterfully executed, he uses food as an allegory for the human condition; sweets become a substitute for everything desirable and a metaphor for pure pleasure. Cotton explains: